Battle Charges Into GOP Primary

Bradley Byrne said he won’t make a decision on running for governor until after the summer.

Hunts­ville May­or Tommy Battle (R) on Fri­day an­nounced his cam­paign for gov­ernor, “be­cause it’s time we had a gov­ern­ment that talks less, listens more, and gets things done for our people. … I’m run­ning for gov­ernor be­cause I’m ready to lead that fight.”

Battle, in an in­tro­duct­ory video: “We’re not just in a battle for Alabama’s val­ues, we’re in a battle for Alabama’s fu­ture. … I’m run­ning for gov­ernor be­cause I know our polit­ic­al in­siders have talked enough.” (re­lease)

“The con­ser­vat­ive Re­pub­lic­an will par­ti­cip­ate in the Re­pub­lic­an primary, re­ly­ing on his suc­cess­ful ex­per­i­ences as may­or and as a small-busi­ness own­er.” (Yel­low­ham­mer News)

BYRNE BOOK. Rep. Brad­ley Byrne (R-01) said Tues­day he “can’t ima­gine mak­ing a de­cision” on a pos­sible run for gov­ernor “be­fore the end of the sum­mer. If I make a de­cision be­fore then it may very well be that I don’t want to do it.”

Byrne: “It’s not something I’m chomp­ing at the bit to do. But there’s some people who have asked me to look at those things, and I’ll look at them.”

Byrne: “When I ran for gov­ernor in Alabama in 2009, 2010, we star­ted in late-May, early June of the year be­fore. And I thought that was too much. I think that was more harm­ful than help­ful. So I think the gov­ernor’s race will start after this [spe­cial Sen­ate] elec­tion, at least the Re­pub­lic­an part of this elec­tion’s over in Septem­ber.” (Hot­line re­port­ing)